Thursday, February 25, 2016

This weekend (Fri-Sun) you can find me in Ohio for the Cleveland Comic Con. I hear it's a good show and this will be my first appearance there, so come on by Artists Alley and say hello. I will have books, prints, sketch cards, original art and I'll be doing commissions, as well.

Michigan will be well represented with fellow artists The Minor Brothers (Matt, Jake and Kevin), Bill Pulkovski, Dom Riggio just to name a few.

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

So, last week this beautiful mind pulls out into traffic doing about ten miles per hour causing me to hit the breaks before plowing into him. He then proceeds to go even slower if that's possible and as I try to go around him he drifts over to cut me off. Finally, he gets over as driving is a very difficult thing and I can get past this danger to everyone. As I look over he has the universal sign of aggression (and I give him the universal sign for hello) with the lifted chin and smug look. Another moron who's only purpose is to get in the way.

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

So, I spent a lot of last year working on a 10 page comic book commission for David Himmel, who is a writer and the editor-in-chief for Chicago Health Magazine. Super Nonny is a story about his grandmother and great-grandmother to the four children in the story, David's nephews and niece. At first I was little hesitant to take the job, with this being a personal story with likenesses and all. But, after reading the script I was more than happy to do this one. David created not just a cute little story about his Nonny, but a witty and charming tale that can be enjoyed by anyone who reads it. I guess that is what being a good writer is all about.

Over the next coming weeks I will show the story in it's entirety. Super Nonny, written by David (a gift for his family), pencils and inks by yours truly and my Stoopid Stuf co-hort Kevin Minor helped out with the interior colors. I did the cover colors seen above and knew it would take me forever just to make it look passable, so I needed someone with better skills than I.

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

This Saturday is the annual Shiver On The River event on Belle Isle in Detroit. All sorts of events are planned and most or all of the buildings will be open, including the aquarium. Festivities start at 10am.

Monday, February 1, 2016

Next up in the process of making the Belle Isle Aquarium weathervane was the final mold making that would be needed to cast the metal. In this case, aluminum.

These are sand molds that were made around the plaster castings. This is one half of the gar.

The plaster has been mostly removed and since the gar measures in at about four and a half feet the sand molds had to be sectioned off into three parts to be cast separately. Sheet metal was used to separate the parts.

Here is a side view showing the narrowing of the nose of the gar.

These past three pics show the making of the second half of the molds.

Here are the molds for the electric eel. Note, in these, as well as the gar pics, the 'knuckle' marks to line up the molds. At this stage, the work was mostly done by artist Leslie Cisco while doing the same for the Robocop statue molds. Thanks to Leslie for the pics!